Anti gay marriage sign sparks protest at Acushnet church

ANIKA CLARK

Wednesday

May 16, 2012 at 1:15 PMMay 17, 2012 at 10:04 AM

Three lines on a church sign about gay marriage have gone viral, inspired protest and sparked vitriol on both sides of the issue.

ACUSHNET — Facebook took an Acushnet church and its anti-gay-marriage sign viral this week, sparking a war of words and vitriol.At the center of the uproar is a message on St. Francis Xavier's letter board that recently read “Two Men are Friends Not Spouses.”

“I didn't calculate reaction into it because, to be honest with you, we're a Catholic institution and our responsibility is to speak out on behalf of Christ,” said Steven Guillotte, director of pastoral services at St. Francis Xavier Parish in Acushnet, who put up the message Tuesday morning.

That reaction has ranged from quiet protest to an expletive-laced voicemail message saying the church should be burned.

Vanessa Raymond, a Facebook user who has posted heavily on this issue, said she left a counter-sign at the parish that everyone is welcome in this community.

Meanwhile, three signs of a very different tone were found Wednesday on church property. Among other things they tell the reader to “Pray for Death” and make a sexually derogatory reference to the Virgin Mary.

When news of the church's “Two Men” sign hit Joshua Scribner of New Bedford, he said “I couldn't even believe that a church would put that.” The gay 25-year-old's next thought was “Well, if it is real, why would they only put ‘men?'”

Alisha Lemieux, an 18-year-old New Bedford resident, said the sign left her shocked and confused. “I came from a Catholic background. I went to Catholic school for 10 years,” said Lemieux, who is bisexual. “That made it a little more difficult to accept being who I am.”

The letter board's message was swapped Wednesday morning in favor of a message about Thursday Mass in a move Msgr. Gerard O'Connor said was unrelated to the uproar. Still, Kim Miska, 37, of Fairhaven, and Becky Quail, 37, of Acushnet, stood in front of the parish in protest. After about an hour, they said most of the responses had been positive, although a passerby had slung an anti-gay slur at them. ”You can believe in what you want to believe in but there's no reason to shove it down everybody's throat,” Miska said. “I'm Catholic but I was brought up to accept.”

O'Connor said the protesters have every right to stand on the sidewalk and make a statement but the church also has the right to put up its message. “I thought we had freedom of religion, freedom of speech,” he said. “Show your point of view. But why couldn't we?”

The church had Raymond's protest sign removed Tuesday because it was nailed to the parish's fence, according to O'Connor.The pastor also disputed the idea that the church's message board was “hateful.” The Catholic Church has “always said marriage is ... a sacrament between a man and a woman, which is open to life,” he said. “It doesn't mean we hate you because of your sexuality. ... But apparently we're hated now because we have that view.”

Scribner agreed the church is entitled to its beliefs. But “there's a line, I feel, of respect that they kind of crossed,” he said. While the church's message is often heard on the news, “when you're in a small community, I just feel like you need to think about others' feelings. ... I mean, that's what they preach.”

In the meantime, Scribner stressed the importance of peaceful response and called the anti-Catholic signs left at the parish “horrible.”

“That's just giving them ammo to throw back at us,” he said. “That's fighting hate with hate.”

It's ammunition that the Catholic Action League was quick to seize. In a news release that railed against what it called “totalitarian instincts of organized homosexualism in America,” the Catholic Action League called for a response by Attorney General Martha Coakley and Bristol County District Attorney C. Samuel Sutter.

“Intimidating or interfering with someone in the exercise of their constitutional rights — such as freedom of speech or the free exercise of religion — is a crime in Massachusetts,” the Catholic Action League said. “Since 1990, it has been a hate crime.”

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